from the what-was-the-benefit-again? dept

A couple of months ago, we reported on some interesting research into the reality of US trade agreements, in contrast to the rosy pictures always painted when they are being sold to the public by politicians. In particular, it turned out that far from boosting US exports and creating more jobs, both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and KORUS, the free trade agreement with South Korea, actually did the opposite -- increasing the US trade deficit with those countries, and destroying hundreds of thousands of American jobs.

But of course bare economic statistics don't capture the full effect of free trade agreements. For example, there is also the environmental impact to consider. An interesting press release from the Sierra Club reports on a meeting held to consider that aspect. It turns out that things look as bad there as they do on the economic front:

"Nearly 20 years into NAFTA and the evidence is in," said Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program. "NAFTA led to an expansion of deforestation and unsustainable water use in order to support export-oriented agriculture. It gave massive rights to corporations to challenge environmental and climate safeguards in private trade tribunals. It expanded exports in dirty fossil fuels in a time when we should be moving beyond these outdated fuels and investing in clean energy. Governments must take a page out of the history books and stop negotiating trade pacts that gut protections for our air, water, land, workers, and communities."

That last comment is a clear reference to TPP, but applies equally to TAFTA/TTIP. Both of these are likely to include investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) measures that allow companies to sue entire nations for alleged "expropriation" of future profits in the "private tribunals" referred to above. One of the ways that governments can be accused of doing that is by strengthening safeguards for the environment, since that often has the knock-on effect of increasing costs for businesses, and thus reducing their future profits. Companies then try to claim ISDS provisions in trade agreements give them the "right" to sue for compensation -- Techdirt recently wrote about a case involving the Canadian province of Quebec.

"I've seen the letters from the New York and DC law firms coming up to the Canadian government on virtually every new environmental regulation and proposition in the last five years. They involved dry-cleaning chemicals, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, patent law. Virtually all of the new initiatives were targeted and most of them never saw the light of day."

What this means in practice is that ISDS clauses in major US trade agreements currently being negotiated are likely to have the same negative effects on the environment as NAFTA, but on a much greater scale. That's because they involve far larger trade blocs, and recourse to ISDS tribunals has increased greatly in recent years, adding to the credibility of threats to use them unless plans for more stringent environmental policies are dumped. So alongside the dubious economic claims being made for them, which are undermined by the failure of both NAFTA and KORUS to produce the predicted exports or jobs, we can now add the hidden environmental damage as yet another reason to call into question the alleged benefits of both TPP and TAFTA/TTIP.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of cool cars that are just too expensive for most people to even think about buying, but sometimes the really cool cars are the ones that aren't even quite ready to be sold (Tesla SUV, anyone?). Gull wing doors and exotic metal alloys are usually the key parts of concept vehicles and prototype cars. Here are just a couple cars you might have seen and a prediction of what we'll all be driving in the next few decades.

from the seems-like-a-problem,-no? dept

One of the common arguments against file sharing and cyberlocker sites is that there's just so much infringement going on there. Of course, when people point out that there are many non-infringing uses, copyright maximalists dismiss this as either not being important, or being such a tiny part of those sites as to not matter. However, that's not the law. Under the Supreme Court's ruling in the Sony Betamax case, the court noted that if the device was merely "capable of substantial non-infringing uses," then it was legal.

The staple article of commerce doctrine must strike a balance between a copyright holder's legitimate demand for effective -- not merely symbolic -- protection of the statutory monopoly, and the rights of others freely to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce. Accordingly, the sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes. Indeed, it need merely be capable of substantial noninfringing uses.

Furthermore, for those who argue about what "substantial" is, it's important to note that, in the early days, nearly all of the usage of these new forms of content recording and delivery were mostly for infringement. But that's due to the content industry's own slow nature to adopt these tools. Indeed, when the Betamax was found legal, less than 9% of uses were found to be non-infringing -- and that was deemed more than enough. Even the argument that all that other infringing use pulls people in was rejected in the Betamax lawsuit, where the court noted:

Unlike cameras, typewriters and Xerox machines, whose primary market is derived from non-infringing uses, there would be little, if any, market for VTRs if they could not be used for infringing purposes. Petitioners' unwillingness to devise a technological means of preventing copying of copyrighted works makes plain that without the ability to make unconsented copies of the copyrighted motion pictures owned by respondents and amici, there would be little if any market for VTRs.

But they were still found to be legal.

Fast forward to today, and TorrentFreak points our attention to a new study looking at the substantial non-infringing uses of Megaupload, and finds that, as with the Betamax, even if there was wide infringement, not only was it "capable of substantial non-infringing uses," but it was widely used that way.

For Megaupload (MU) the researchers found that 31% of all uploads were infringing, while 4.3% of uploads were clearly legitimate. This means that with an estimated 250 million uploads, 10.75 million uploads were non-infringing. For the remaining 65% the copyrighted status was either unknown, or the raters couldn’t reach consensus.

Using the most conservative estimate the findings show that the Megaupload raid took down at least 10.75 million legitimate files. In addition, the researchers found that FileFactory had a highest percentage of non-infringing uploads (14%).

Obviously, there are sample size issues here, and the fact that the majority of the files are "unknown" may be a limiting factor. But, at the very least, it appears that there were many, many, many legitimate uses of Megaupload, all shut down and destroyed without letting their owners get the data back, and without a trial to discuss those non-infringing uses, and whether or not the platform itself was legal.

from the odd dept

We've mocked the NSA for the way it always reverts to FUD about "terrorists" to show how "successful" programs like PRISM have been, but then also reverts to talking about cybersecurity as a focus to make the surveillance seem more like it's about protecting people, rather than spying on them. However, as some of the latest revealed documents show, perhaps the NSA has its talking points all mixed up. There's plenty to discuss concerning the revelations about the NSA spying on French phone calls, but some people have noticed that, while some of the presentation documents revealed with that story were revealed before, there are a few new ones as well, including this one:

The key thing here is the report that the NSA was able to use its FAA authority (apparently via both PRISM and "upstream collection" -- which is tapping directly into the backbone via telcos) to figure out that someone, perhaps the Chinese, had gotten access to a defense contractor's network and was either preparing to, or at least had the ability to get 150 gigs of important data out. The NSA alerted the FBI which alerted the contractor and they plugged the hole the same day. While that certainly seems like a good thing, it's not entirely clear stopping such hacking is really worth giving up a ton of privacy, though it does show, again, why Keith Alexander keeps demanding access to pretty much everything. Of course, you'd think that the NSA would be a bit more forward in promoting this success story, rather than its bogus claims about stopping terrorist attacks, which have fallen apart under scrutiny.

The other interesting slide is this one:

It shows some of the differences between PRISM and the upstream collections, both of which the NSA believes are authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. PRISM involves being able to collect specific data from the 9 specific companies which have been named (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Skype, AOL, Paltalk, YouTube), while "upstream" is what the NSA gets from tapping the backbone via telcos. "DNR Selectors" are the phone call metadata collected under a different program (Section 215 of the Patriot Act) which they apparently can filter the upstream data collection against. "DNI" is internet data (email addresses and such). Once again, it looks like tapping the backbone provides a hell of a lot more data, but it lacks the ability to "access stored communications," which they get via PRISM.

The other interesting tidbit to me, is the "direct relationship" claim. Note that with PRISM, it says "only through FBI," which suggests a reason why the PRISM companies have insisted that they've never been involved in any NSA program. It looks like they may have only had to deal with FBI requests (and associated FISA court orders). It's just that the data the FBI gets is then shared with the NSA.

from the this-is-good dept

One of the more annoying things about the current Supreme Court is how it always seems to figure out ways to avoid actually tackling the key questions that people are asking. For example in the Jones v. US case, the court very carefully tiptoed around actually answering the question of whether or not law enforcement putting a GPS on a car required a warrant. Some of the Justices suggested it should, but it wasn't part of the official ruling. So, it gets left out there in the ether for people to try in other lawsuits. And now an appeals court has ruled on the issue, saying that a warrantless GPS tracking of someone's car is a 4th Amendment violation. The court goes into a full exploration of the 4th amendment and how it applies here. It's well worth reading (starting around page 18). Law enforcement's argument is in for a tough time:

We therefore begin with the following observation:
under the physical intrusion theory of the Fourth Amendment,
the police actions in this case — i.e., physical entry upon and
occupation of an individual‟s house or effects for purposes of
ongoing GPS tracking — are highly disconcerting.

It then goes through a thorough look at each of the government's arguments for why a warrantless GPS search could be deemed "reasonable" and finds each one wanting. The main one is that the government insists that if there's a "reasonable suspicion," they should be able to do a warrantless search. The court's not buying it.

While the interests the police wished to further in this case are
certainly important, the same interests arise in every
investigation where the police have a potential suspect. We
are hard pressed to say, therefore, that the police can —
without warrant or probable cause — embark on a lengthy
program of remote electronic surveillance that requires almost
no law enforcement resources and physically intrudes upon
an ordinary citizen‟s private property.

This is in the third circuit and I'd imagine that there will be an appeal to the Supreme Court. Given the Court's avoiding the question in the Jones case, hopefully it will take it and support the argument that the 4th Amendment does apply to GPS searches and a lack of a warrant is unconstitutional. Of course, what I still don't understand in all of this is why law enforcement seems so averse to actually going out and getting a warrant. Is it really that difficult?

The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records like car registrations and employment information.

While the agency says that the goal is to streamline the security procedures for millions of passengers who pose no risk, the new measures give the government greater authority to use travelers' data for domestic airport screenings. Previously that level of scrutiny applied only to individuals entering the United States…

It is unclear precisely what information the agency is relying upon to make these risk assessments, given the extensive range of records it can access, including tax identification number, past travel itineraries, property records, physical characteristics, and law enforcement or intelligence information.

At what point does someone "who poses no risk" start feeling offended the TSA is doing deep read on his or her financial and employment background? The TSA already has the PreCheck program, which allows fliers to pay money to reclaim civil liberties removed by the agency's security theater.

Those who haven't joined this select group are still receiving very thorough vetting (even when flying domestically) but without gaining any of the benefits the one benefit of extensive pre-screening: speedier passage through security. The TSA says these background checks "streamline" the process, but if so, the results are nearly imperceptible to travelers. Of course, this lack of noticeable change may be due to the TSA's bold plan to speed up things slightly sometime before 2015.

The T.S.A. has emphasized its goal of giving 25 percent of all passengers lighter screening by the end of next year, meaning they can keep their shoes and jackets on, wait in separate lines and leave laptop computers in their bags.

While we're all waiting for a one-quarter of travelers to start breezing through security, the extensive background checks will continue on all fliers, with the collected data being shared indiscriminately with other government agencies and private businesses.

Much of this personal data is widely shared within the Department of Homeland Security and with other government agencies. Privacy notices for these databases note that the information may be shared with federal, state and local authorities; foreign governments; law enforcement and intelligence agencies — and in some cases, private companies for purposes unrelated to security or travel.

For instance, an update about the T.S.A.'s Transportation Security Enforcement Record System, which contains information about travelers accused of "violations or potential violations" of security regulations, warns that the records may be shared with "a debt collection agency for the purpose of debt collection."

If you're one of those unlucky travelers who receive the algorithmically-generated "please extensively search this flier" designation (or return home from a trip to find your voicemail full of calls from collections agencies), there's not much you can do about it. There's an official "Traveler Redress Inquiry Program," but as we've noted before, it's low on functionality and long on officious uselessness.The TRIP provides minimal details in response to inquiries, if it can be bothered to respond at all. Those on no-fly lists (or those that suspect they might be) receive letters that refuse to "confirm nor deny" the inquirer's inclusion on this super-secret list.

Add the TSA to the long list of agencies gathering tons of data on Americans simply because they have the technology and the opportunity. Supposedly this invasion of privacy will pay off in an incremental speed improvement at airport security checkpoints sometime in the next year or two. The resulting payoff in increased security will continue to hover right around nil for the foreseeable future.

from the yes,-it's-godwined-from-the-very-start dept

You can get people to sign just about any kind of petition, apparently. There's an amusing video making the rounds, put together by Mark Dice, in which he convinces people on a boardwalk in San Diego to sign a petition for the "city council" to "support an Orwellian police state." Sometimes he directly mentions the idea of modeling this police state on "Nazi Germany" and it doesn't appear to give anyone any pause at all.

Of course, the video is cut so you never see the full interactions (and, of course you only see the ones he chose to include), or what gets people to agree to sign up in the first place. In most cases, it looks like people have already committed to signing the petition before he goes into the statements about the "Orwellian police state," or "modeled on Nazi Germany," and he does so in a monotone way. But, even then, none of the people shown in the video seem to care much. Obviously, it could be that many others refused to sign or realized what he was up to and we just don't see it. But, beyond being an amusing bit of video, it should remind you how worthless street petitions tend to be.

from the another-tragedy-and-another-misguided-crusade dept

Lakeland, Florida has yet to erect any cyberbullying laws in the wake of a 12-years-old student's suicide, setting it apart from many other locales which have reacted badly to tragedies by rushing out overly broad and under-thought legislation. Of course, this plus is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd has pretty much turned his office into a vigilante squad after declaring his "zero tolerance" (and made up just right now) policy against cyberbullying.

Judd arrested 14-year-old Guadalupe Shaw for a Facebook post in which she acknowledged bullying Rebecca Sedwick and noted she "didn't give a fuck" that the 12-year-old had killed herself. Judd charged Shaw with aggravated stalking. Not content with that, Judd tasked his investigators with finding something he could charge Shaw's parents with because he was unimpressed with Shaw's unrepentant attitude and her parents' failure to "smash" Shaw's computer into "thousands of pieces" after they found out about her activities.

An outspoken Florida sheriff who arrested a 14-year-old girl for cyber-bullying after a younger schoolmate killed herself has filed child abuse charges against her mother, over an unrelated incident.

Polk County sheriff Grady Judd said Vivien Lee Vosburg, 30, punched and shouted obscenities at several children in her care in a violent incident in June that was captured on video [which can be viewed here] and later posted to Facebook by one of the children.

Judd has held Shaw's mother, Vivian Lee Vosburg, on child abuse charges. Meanwhile, Shaw has been released pending a court appearance. Not exactly what Judd was looking for when he first stated his desire to charge Shaw's parents for contributing (I guess) to the bullying of Rebecca Sedwick, but it seems to fit the narrative he's portraying.

"This clearly indicates to us that this appears to be a normal way of life," said Judd, who has declared a "zero tolerance" approach to cyber-bullying in his county. "They're laughing and cussing and throwing the F-bomb around, then they're posting that conduct for all to see. It is clear not only has Vosburg demonstrated she cannot control the behaviour of children she has access to without using violence, but she is obviously not monitoring the social media sites of children she has access to either.

"I'm astounded by this conduct, I'm astounded that it was posted and then I'm even more astounded that it stayed there."

Of Guadalupe Shaw, Judd said: "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

Florida attorney Mark O'Mara is stepping onto center stage in the debate over how much parents should be held responsible for children’s cyberbullying. He plans to draft legislation to impose criminal liability on parents who show "willful blindness or gross negligence" to the kind of online torment allegedly inflicted on Rebecca Sedwick, for which two girls were recently arrested.

"If a child kills someone while operating a parent’s car, the parents can be held responsible. If a child kills someone while using a parent's gun, the parent can be held responsible. If a child breaks the law using a computer or cellphone provided by the parent, how is that different?" wrote Mr. O'Mara, who served as defense attorney for George Zimmerman in this year's Trayvon Martin murder trial, in his "O'Mara Law Blog" on Thursday.

O'Mara's terrible idea looks to do more damage than Sheriff Judd's new found interest in zero tolerance policing of cyberbullies. O'Mara's proposal aims to do what Nova Scotia's atrociously bad cyberbullying law does: hold parents responsible for their children's actions. While O'Mara may have point about legal adults having been historically held responsible for certain illegal acts utilizing property owned by parents, this is breaking new ground.

For one thing, while Nova Scotia's law has the (to date untested) potential to hold parents civilly liable for their children's online bullying actions, O'Mara's draft legislation would hold parents criminally liable, a much more negative potential outcome. The attorney believes the law is needed because (in his opinion) parents have become too lax in monitoring and controlling their children's online activities.

O'Mara acknowledged in his blog that "there are substantial obstacles in the way of passing such legislation," but he said, "If parents won't adopt that responsibility, we need to hold their feet to the fire and insist they share liability, especially when their children's actions have life or death consequences."

If O'Mara's legislation is combined with the worst aspects of Nova Scotia's law (purely subjective "standard" for what can be termed "bullying," the entire process is ex parte -- no input from the accused during any step of the process), Floridians are going to have a new nightmare on their hands. Laws like this chill speech by holding normally protected expression to broadly restrictive standards. But all of this is what's come to be expected when people with the power to push legislation and deploy investigators decide to turn a tragedy into a crusade.

from the left-hand,-right-hand dept

There's been plenty of talk about Silk Road since the site got shut down and Ross Ulbricht was arrested and accused of being Dread Pirate Roberts behind the site. Of course, it struck us as interesting that hours after the arrest and the criminal complaint in NY, there was also an indictment in Maryland. Since then, there have been a bunch of Silk Road related arrests concerning drug dealers who used the site. One of those, as named in our last post on this, was Steven Sadler of Bellevue, Washington.

The folks over at The Smoking Gun have a bunch of details about Sadler, which show that he wasn't discovered as a result of the Ulbricht arrest, but rather had been raided months ago and became an informant for the feds. His arrest and court hearing were rushed into place after the Ulbricht arrest and the site shut down:

The hastily arranged court appearance for Sadler was prompted by the FBI's arrest a day earlier of Ross Ulbricht, who has been charged with being the mastermind behind the Silk Road site, which operated on the "darknet" (or "deep web"). Simultaneous to Ulrich's bust, federal investigators shut down the two-year-old site, which relied on the anonymizing tool Tor to shield both vendors and patrons.

During the October 2 hearing, federal prosecutor Thomas Woods told Tsuchida that "Mr. Sadler has been cooperating, working for the government for the past two months." Referring to "unusual circumstances," Woods noted that "through reasons unrelated to" Sadler, his cooperation "abruptly came to an end this morning." Sadler's lawyer told Tsuchida that her client was in "constant communication with the government."

Of course, this makes you wonder just how (un)coordinated the various efforts against Silk Road really were by the feds. We've got two separate lawsuits filed against Ulbricht in two separate courts, and now we find out that the feds had already been working one of the site's top dealers (Sadler went by the name "Nod" on the site). You'd think the feds would be a bit more communicative with each other over their various attempts to investigate Silk Road, its operators and users.

The details also suggest a few other informants, including one who taught investigators how to use Silk Road:

Investigators also were aided by a confidential informant who agreed to cooperate after agents seized several packages mailed to her by Silk Road heroin dealers. In a TSG interview, the woman--a business owner in her thirties--said she had made several heroin purchases from "Nod" and allowed investigators to take over her Silk Road account to make undercover drug purchases.

A self-described "junkie" who has been clean since May, the informant said she helped a postal inspector navigate Silk Road and explained how to fund an account with Bitcoin, the virtual currency used for purchases. When an undercover drug purchase failed to arrive, a postal inspector--apparently sensing a rip-off--sent the woman an e-mail seeking advice as to how to address the missing Express Mail parcel with the narcotics seller. When the informant referred to the package "going missing," the inspector replied, "I know the package is not missing, I work for the post office…hahaha. They just have not sent it."

Either way, it seems likely that more arrests are coming, but it still seems to suggest a level of dysfunction among the feds with regards to coordinating their investigations.

from the that's-unfortunate dept

With last week's announcement that IsoHunt was shutting down, the famed "Archive Team" apparently sprung into action to try to preserve the information on the site. As you hopefully know, the Archive Team works hard to preserve important information that has historical relevance and importance. For example, it preserved much of GeoCities after that site was shut down. If you don't understand, preserving historical information is extremely important in an age where such information can disappear entirely.

Unfortunately, perhaps because of legal fears, IsoHunt's Gary Fung apparently decided that this archive effort may be legally problematic and shut down the site days early, stating:

I'm told there was this Internet archival team that wants to make historical copy of our .torrent files, I'm honoured that people thinks our site is worthy of historical preservation, but the truth is about 95% of those .torrent files can be found off Google regardless and mostly have been indexed from other BitTorrent sites in the first place.

But, of course, as the Archive Team points out, it was never about saving those .torrent files, but rather all the metadata around them:

I think Gary might have misunderstood the purpose of the archiving project; he basically states that “the .torrent files can be found elsewhere too” – but this completely misses the point, being the archiving of the metadata *around* those torrents, such as user comments. These cannot be replicated from other sources…

The team apparently to get about 242 gigs of data, but there was a lot more that they missed. That's too bad.

Her editorial basically checks every box on the list of Section 215isms.

[X] LEGAL

The NSA call-records program is legal…

[X] OVERSIGHT

… and subject to extensive congressional and judicial oversight.

These words are meant to be comforting, showing that the NSA isn't doing anything illegal, especially since any oversight would certainly prohibit that, right? Except that the legality of the program depends on secret interpretations and a very loose reading of the Third Party Doctrine. As for the oversight? The FISA court has been (rightfully) referred to as a "rubber stamp," and the oversight is hampered by the underhanded tactics deployed by intelligence committee heads.

So, while the sentence may be technically true, the words being used don't mean what most Americans would assume them to mean.

[X] IT WORKS

Above all, the program has been effective in helping to prevent terrorist plots against the U.S. and our allies.

Once again, there's very little proof that the Section 215 program has had any effect. At one point, defenders were claiming over 50 plots had been prevented by this program. At the latest count, it's been pared down to two. And those two are still "maybes."

The most recent narrative push is that this program would have prevented the 9/11 attacks, because of a San Diego phone number being contacted by one of the hijackers. But this claim should be taken with a server full of salt because even with the program, the NSA is having trouble finding any needles scattered amongst all the hay. It does well connecting the dots after attacks have occurred, but Americans shouldn't have to sacrifice liberty for mop-up security.

[X] NOT SURVEILLANCE

The call-records program is not surveillance. It does not collect the content of any communication, nor do the records include names or locations.

Feinstein cites the Supreme Court's decision that business records aren't protected by the Fourth Amendment. What she glosses over is the fact that these "unprotected" records can paint a very vivid picture of telco customers, many of whom would be very surprised at how little is left up to the imagination by metadata.

[X] CONNECT THE DOTS

This program helps "connect the dots" — the main failure of our intelligence before 9/11.

And continues to be a failure more than a decade later! Feinstein quotes two intelligence leaders as claiming an untargeted metadata haul would have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Considering the fact that the NSA can only claim two "maybes" in its decade-plus of having access to these records, those claims seem to be completely faith-based.

Feinstein specifically mentions hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who supposedly would have been discovered here in the US pre-9/11 had the agencies been able to collect vast amounts of metadata. Unfortunately, the truth is that the CIA had plenty of info on al-Mihdhar's movements in other countries as it had been tracking his movements for two years. But when it lost him in 2000, it did nothing proactive, like place him on watch list in case he returned to the US. Evidence exists that various call tracing programs built at the behest of the NSA and DEA were in place well before 2001, and none of those helped track down a person well known to the CIA.

[X] NEEDLES IN HAYSTACKS

The overwhelming majority of records are never reviewed before being destroyed, but it is necessary for the NSA to obtain "the haystack" of records in order to find the terrorist "needle."

One paragraph after "connecting the dots" (which the NSA can't seem to do proactively), Feinstein deploys the other data-harvesting cliche. The NSA isn't having much luck with its needle-finding technology either and recently, its haystacks have been bursting into flames. So, this is a non-starter.

[X] TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE, EVEN IF IT TAKES FOREVER

To be effective, the NSA must be able to conduct these queries quickly, without regard to which phone carrier a terrorist or conspirator uses. And the records must be available for a few years — longer than phone companies need them for billing purposes.

Let me get this straight: the NSA needs records right away but also wants to keep them indefinitely. The latter part plays to the agency's strength -- the deployment of hindsight-guided, dot-connection technology. Its catlike reflexes are generally underwhelming when it comes to preventative efforts, however.

[X] METADATA STOPS TERRORISM

Since its inception, this program has played a role in stopping roughly a dozen terror plots and identifying terrorism supporters in the U.S.

This number is also false, but it's one that's being used to salvage the upper end claim of "54." The "roughly a dozen" refers to thirteen of those 54 that have a "terrorism nexus" in the US. Feinstein has built a list of nearly 100 terrorism-related arrests, "some" of which have been "thwarted" by the Section 215 program. A perusal of the list shows that many of these were thwarted through old-fashioned sting operations, with a handful of these being plots that FBI agents orchestrated in their entirety. Section 215 is completely unnecessary if you're mainly interested in "foiling" your own plots.

So, with great vagueness, Feinstein makes these assertions and wholly expects USA Today readers to buy the narrative. The US needs a program that allows for untargeted data collection of American phone records just because sometime it might possibly prevent something. It hasn't yet -- not conclusively -- but there's always a chance it will, given the indefinite, unchallenged future Sen. Feinstein is attempting to ensure.

To its credit, USA Today has run its own editorial in response to Feinstein's article. The response demands that the program prove itself, something it has failed to do over the years. Its lack of proven worth almost saw it closed down previously and the renewed defense of the program in the wake of the Snowden leaks has been less than inspiring. USA Today also calls out Feinstein's wishful "could have prevented 9/11" defense, pointing out that it wasn't a lack of data that was the problem, but rather the failure of intelligence agencies to share the data they did have. The editorial closes out with this paragraph, which nods to Ben Franklin's famous quote.

Choosing between privacy rights and security from terrorism is difficult. But before Americans are forced to make that choice, the government ought to demonstrate that this intrusive program has extraordinary value. So far, the administration hasn't even come close.

The NSA's defenders are making minimal concessions to transparency, but it's become obvious that the agency does its "best" work in complete darkness. Having its methods dragged out into the sunlight demonstrates just how invasive they are -- and how little they accomplish.

"[It] led to a lot of people watching the series who otherwise would not have."

Of course, at this point, this shouldn't be surprising. Folks behind Game of Thrones have more or less said the same thing. Of course, they also try to hedge their claims. Gilligan, for example, followed up his statement above with the following:

"The downside is a lot of folks who worked on the show would have made more money, myself included, if all those downloads had been legal."

Except, that's wrong. Or, rather, it's fantasy-world. If people hadn't pirated it, Breaking Bad would have had a much smaller audience, and likely a much shorter run. Recent interviews with the writing staff suggested they expected the show to be cancelled many times throughout the run. If it wasn't getting more and more viewers, it seems likely that it would have been canceled much earlier, and Gilligan's reputation and brand wouldn't be as wonderful as it is currently. It seems quite likely that it would have resulted in him making less money both from Breaking Bad itself and from future projects, where he'll now be able to command a much larger paycheck, given this success.

The MPAA is right that it's "complex," but the constant drumbeat that it's a problem that needs to be fixed seems to ignore the reality that those who have embraced much more widespread distribution and the benefits it provides, have found that it's not necessarily a problem at all. It's only a problem for those who fail to capitalize on it (and, we should note, that "failing to capitalize on new opportunities" is sort of a trademark of the MPAA).

from the might-not-be-real-and-if-they-are,-so-what? dept

So, last week, Brett Gibbs dropped quite the bombshell in one of the key Prenda cases, in which he revealed some spreadsheets that had been shared with him via a Dropbox account, showing that John Steele and Paul Hansmeier had received about 70% of Prenda's proceeds, despite insisting they had no direct relationship with the firm. As expected, lawyers in other Prenda cases have rushed to file those documents in their cases as well. In Minnesota, Paul Hansmeier
has responded, seeking to block the filing of the documents to Magistrate Judge Franklin Noel, who has been overseeing an investigation into the possibility of fraud on the part of Team Prenda. The argument, summed up, is "who knows if those documents are legit, they don't show anything bad, they're not relevant and they were obtained illegally." Almost all of that is, in typical Hansmeier fashion, ridiculous:

Second, the documents Mr. Godfread proposes to file are inadmissible because
they are not authenticated. Mr. Godfread claims that the exhibits "appear" to be financial
records of Prenda Law, Inc. Perhaps he is right, but I have not reviewed Prenda Law's
financials and neither, presumably, has he. Until he can authenticate the documents, they
are inadmissible;

Seems like there's a pretty quick way to take care of that. Judge Noel can put one of the Prendaristas on the stand and ask them if the documents are accurate. Either way, claiming that they're not "authenticated" seems like pretty weak sauce at this stage of the game.

Third, the documents undermine Mr. Godfread's narrative. I have consistently
stated—often to deaf ears—that I sold my law practice to Prenda Law in late-2011 and
subsequently pursued other interests. That is what these documents show. I am labeled an
"old owner" throughout the documents. With one de minimus exception, the only
transfers I received from Prenda Law were in consideration of the sale of my practice;

As Gibbs detailed in his filing, the use of "old owners" was clearly done to leave open exactly this excuse, but it does not seem even remotely credible given the massive amount that continued to go to both Steele and Hansmeier long after the sale. While it's certainly not unheard of for service businesses like law firms and accounting firms to include a percentage of ongoing revenue for a few years after sale, having this much go to Steele and Hansmeier suggests something else. At the very least, it's quite relevant for a deeper discussion into Hansmeier's and Steele's claims of having no relationship with Prenda.

Fourth, the documents have no relevance to the subject-matter of this case, which
was filed as an action for copyright infringement. Although it has since morphed into a
different matter, the day-to-day ledgers of a law firm are not relevant to either inquiry;

Really? I mean, this one doesn't even require a response, since the "subject-matter" of the case is about whether or not Prenda and related companies and individuals were engaged in fraud. It seems highly relevant.

Fifth, if these documents are authentic, then they were stolen. No business would
release sensitive financial documents to its adversaries. I understand that this matter is
being investigated and will be reported to law enforcement, as appropriate.

Again, as Gibbs explained, it appears these documents were placed in a shared Dropbox account, meaning they were given to him. Yes, at the time he was still part of Team Prenda, but that doesn't mean the documents were "stolen." Anyway, there's something kind of funny about Hansmeier saying that this 'theft' "will be reported to law enforcement." It seems quite likely that law enforcement already knows... and that's because there's an ongoing investigation of Hansmeier.